451 Group: Microsoft suing TomTom, not Linux, not open source

I believe the required number of repeats is 3, as per the SNARK protocol specification.

Is this not a variation of what SCO argued: We're not suing Linux, just some /commercial/ users of Linux....

Well, there's also the issue of mission-creep. Microsoft is presumably wanting something narrow enough to avoid scrutiny, but all they need to do is later "discover" that the implementation aspect at stake is in the generic kernel and it becomes about the generic kernel.

Then there's always the risk-o-phobia aspect. If TomTom's implementation is "legally risky", then Microsoft's marketing people need only point out that Red Hat and Ubuntu "could be legally risky" without ever having to attack Linux per-se. Just an implementation. One at a time.

In either case, it's the Roman method of conquest - divide and conquer. So long as they can divide the community into the "targeted" and "everyone else" camps, with the "everyone else" merely spectating, they can rinse and repeat as often as they like. By the time such methods are usually spotted, there's not enough left to form a serious opposition.

Of course, Microsoft might not be wanting to kill Linux by this method, but rather wanting to seize the car navigation market by pwning one of the suppliers and then killing off the rest by sheer bulk, the way they're trying to do with anti-viral stuff. Then we would have to ask whether it makes a difference. Can we afford to ignore anti-competitive behaviour merely because it doesn't hurt us - yet?

As Gandalf noted on his journey to Gondor, it is too late to ask for help when the enemy is upon you.

If it only were that they sued for a GPL-incompliant component ;-)

> How is "the Linux kernel as implemented by TomTom" different from "the Linux kernel"? It is GPL, and if TomTom did some modifications, that would have to be made public.

They would, and, sure enough, are available at http://www.tomtom.com/page.php?Page=gpl#kernel.

I find this very unlikely. As far as I understand, the patents relate to how vfat handles both long and short filenames in the same filesystem. That functionality is part of theLinux vfat driver and not something TomTom has added.

Um, dulles, that quote from Henry VI was put in the mouth of a *bad guy*.
The first thing a tyrant does is indeed to kill all the lawyers (or at
least, in these more squeamish times, suborn them).

Nice. Someone called "dulles" worrying about front companies and "spooks"!

Alastair

Not actually true; CP/M listed file blocks alongside the filename in the directory entries (using extra entries in the same directory table for really long files). There was a single directory for the whole volume, no hierarchical directory trees. CP/M's filesystem did not have an independent index table like a FAT. IIRC it didn't even have a free-blocks bitmap on disk (but don't cite me).

“How do software patents encourage innovation again, in actual practice?”

As far as I know most arguments rely on a proxy measurement. ie since it is difficult to measure "innovation" you have to pick something else, and if you pick the right something you can "prove" your case. In the most ridiculous cases they use the patents themselves as the proxy, meaning they're just begging the question. In other examples they basically make some argument about innovation being signalled by economic growth, and then they ignore the huge confounding factors and declare that a growing economy (or growing IT sector, or whatever) is proof that software patents are a good idea. Obviously that argument is a bit fragile right now, since the economy including IT sectors is in free fall.

"How do software patents encourage innovation again, in actual practice?"

The question can be asked far broader:

"How do patents encourage innovation again, in actual practice?"

And the answer is: The don't. There were some effort to prove this statistically, but all investigations turned up this is NOT SIGNIFICANT. So there is absolutely no proof that patents encourage innovation. neither is there that (also in the broad field, not only software-patents) that they stiffle innovation.

However, another investigation turned up the fact that the only field where revenues from patents are higher than the legal costs associated with them are pharmaceuticals. So even if patents do not stiffle innovation, they are everywere but in the pharmaceutic industry JUST LEGAL OVERHEAD.

Patents can be used for corporate warfare, of course, but does the state really need to maintain a patent-system whose only benefit in most industries is to pay rents for lawyers and to serve to provide ammunition for corporate warfare?